34. A Message From The Past
It was my mother's own girlhood trunk, one in which she had kept her treasures and mementoes all her life. The chief delight of my childhood had been sitting by her side when she took out the different things from it and showed them to me.
Dear, thoughtful, little mother of mine! Almost the last thing she did before her strength failed her utterly was to repack the little trunk, wrapping and labeling each thing it contained, and putting into it only the things she knew I would not use, but wished to keep as memories of her and of my own childhood.
"I do not wish you to have to look over these things while your grief is still fresh for me," she had said, with the divine thoughtfulness that mothers keep until the last breath they draw. "There is nothing in it that you will have to look at for years if you do not wish to do so--that is, except one package that I am going to tell you about now."
She stopped to catch the breath which was so pitifully short in those torturing days before her death, and over her face swept the look of agony which always accompanied any mention by her of my father.
"In the top tray of this trunk," she said, "you will find the inlaid lock box that was your grandmother's and that you have always admired so much. I do not wish to lay any request or command upon you concerning it--you must be the only judge of your own affairs after I leave you--but I would advise you not to open that box unless you are in desperate straits, or until the time has come when you feel that you no longer harbor the resentment you now feel toward your father."
The last words had come faintly through stiffened white lips, for her labor at packing and the emotional strain of talking to me concerning the future had brought on one of the dreaded heart attacks which were so terribly frequent in the last weeks of her life. We had never spoken of the matter afterward, for she did not leave her bed again until the end.
At one time she had motioned me to bring from her desk the old-fashioned key ring on which she kept her keys. She had held up two, a tiny key and a larger one, and whispered hoarsely: "These keys are the keys to the lock box and the little trunk--you know where the others belong." Then she had closed her eyes, as if the effort of speaking had exhausted her, as indeed it had.
In the wild grief which followed my mother's death there was no thought of my unknown father except the bitterness I had always felt toward him. I knew that the terrible sorrow he had caused my mother had helped to shorten her life, and my heart was hot with anger against him.
I had never opened the trunk since her death. The exciting, almost tragic experiences of my life with Dicky had swept all the old days into the background. I could not analyze the change that had come over me. As I lifted the lid of the trunk and took from the top tray the inlaid box which my mother's hands had last touched, my grief for her was mingled with a strange new longing to find out anything I could concerning the father I had never known.
"For my daughter Margaret's eyes alone."
The superscription on the envelope which I held in my hand stared up at me with all the sentience of a living thing. The letters were in the crabbed, trembling, old-fashioned handwriting of my mother--the last words that she had ever written. It was as if she had come back from the dead to talk to me.
With the memory of my mother's advice, I hesitated for a long time before breaking the seal. With the letters pressed close against my tear-wet cheeks I sat for a long time, busy with memories of my mother and debating whether or not I had the right to open the letter.
I certainly was not in desperate straits, and I could not conscientiously say that I no longer harbored any resentment toward^the father of whom I had no recollection. I felt that never in my life could I fully pardon the man who had made my mother suffer so terribly. But the longing to know something of my father, which I had felt since the coming into my life of Robert Gordon, had become almost an obsession, with me.
"Little mother," I whispered, "forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I must know what is in this letter to me."
With trembling fingers I broke the seal and drew out the closely written pages which the envelope contained.
"Mother's Only Comfort," the letter began, and at the sight of the dear familiar words, which I had so often heard from my mother's lips--it was the name she had given me when a tiny girl, and which she used until the day of her death--tears again blinded my eyes.
"When you read this I shall have left you forever. It is my prayer that when the time comes for you to read it, it will be because you have forgiven your father, not because you are in desperate need. How I wish I could have seen you safe in the shelter of a good man's love before I had to go away from you forever!"
"Safe in the shelter of a good man's love," I repeated the words thoughtfully. Had my mother been given her wish when she could no longer witness its fulfilment? I was angry and humiliated at myself that I could not give a swift, unqualified assent to my own question. A "good man" Dicky certainly was, and I was in the "shelter of his love" at present. But "safe" with Dicky I was afraid I could never be. Mingled always with my love for him, my trust in him, was a tiny undercurrent of uncertainty as to the stability of my husband's affection for me.
As I turned to my mother's letter again, there was a tiny pang at my heart at the thought that by my marriage with Dicky I had thwarted the dearest wish of my little mother's heart.
For between the lines I could read the unspoken thought that had been in her mind since I was a very young girl. "Safe in the shelter of a good man's love" meant to my mother only one thing. If she had written the words "safe in the shelter of Jack Bickett's love," I could not have grasped her meaning more clearly.
But my mother's wish must forever remain ungranted. Jack was "somewhere in France," and for me, safe or not safe, stable or unstable, Dicky was "my man," the only man I had ever loved, the only man I could ever love. "For better or worse," the dear old minister had said who performed our wedding ceremony, and my heart reaffirmed the words as I bent my eyes again to the closely written pages I held in my hands.
"Because you have always been so bitter, Margaret, against your father, and because it has always caused me great anguish to speak of him, I have allowed you to rest under the impression that I had never heard anything concerning him since his disappearance, and that I do not know whether he be living or dead. The last statement is true, for years ago I definitely refused to receive any communication from him, but I must tell you that I believe him to be living, and that I know that living or dead he has provided money for your use if you should ever wish to claim it.
"The address he last sent me, and that of the firm of lawyers who has the management of the property intended for you, are sealed in envelopes in this box. In it also are all the things necessary to establish your identity, my marriage certificate, your birth record, pictures of your father and of me, and of the three of us taken when you were two years old, before the shadow of the awful tragedy that came later had begun to fall."
I sprang from my chair, dropping the pages of the letter unheeded in the shock of the revelation they brought me. My father had planned for me; had provided for me; had tried to communicate with my mother! He must have been repentant; he was not all the heartless brute I had thought him. As though a cloud had been lifted, from my life and a weary weight had rolled from my heart, I turned again to mother's letter.
"Remember, it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living, sometime you may be reconciled, to him. I have been weak and bitter enough during all these years to be meanly comforted by your stanch championship of me, and your detestation of the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,--if, indeed, he be living--should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure explain his action.
"I was much to blame--I can see it now, for not being able to hold his love. You are so much like me, my darling, that I tremble for your happiness if you should happen to marry the wrong kind of man. I have wondered often if the story of my tragedy, terrible as it is for me to think of it, might not help you. And yet--it might do more harm than good. At any rate, I have written it all out, and put it with the other things in the box. I feel a curious sort of fatalism concerning this letter. It is borne in upon me that if you ever need to read it you will read it. It will help you to understand your father better. It may help you to understand your husband; although, God grant, knowledge like mine may never come to you.
"Of one thing I am certain, you will never have anything to do with the woman who abused my friendship and took your father from me. I cannot carry my forgiveness far enough, even in the presence of death, to bid you go to him if she be still a part of his life.
"I can write no more, my darling. I want you to know that you have been the dearest child a mother could have, and that you have never given me moment's uneasiness in my life. God bless and keep you.
"MOTHER."
I did not weep when I had finished the letter. There was that in its closing words that dried my tears. I put the pages reverently in the envelope, laid it in the old box, closed and locked the lid, and replaced it in the trunk. For my mother's bitter mention of the woman who had stolen my father from her had brought back the old, wild hatred I had felt for so many years.
"Whatever Robert Gordon can tell me of you, mother darling, I will gladly hear," I whispered, as I locked her old trunk, "but I never want to hear him talk of the woman who so cruelly ruined your life."